SiteGround GoGeek Review (Avoid): Garbage Plan And 1 Year Renewal To Get You Sucked Into A Bad Hosting Company

Siteground gogeek review

I migrated my website to SiteGround’s GoGeek hosting in February of 2015.

I started on Bluehost then eventually upgraded to GoGeek which is semi-dedicated hosting and roughly 4x faster than StartUp. That is the biggest difference between GoGeek and their other shared hosting plans – the amount of server resources you get which is the main factor when it comes to hosting and site speed. Your website will load faster with the higher plans.

You can see a StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek comparison chart on SiteGround’s features page which also shows you the extra server resources you get under the “we allocate the resources you need” section. But I will go over these in my SiteGround GoGeek review… with GoGeek you basically get more server resources, 1-click staging to create demo websites, 10GB more storage than GrowBig, and SiteGround will restore your website for you if needed.

Ignore everything in this review and read my updated SiteGround review since their hosting is now complete garbage.

If you have any questions or want to leave your own feedback of SiteGround’s GoGeek hosting, leave a comment below. But I do think it’s an awesome plan for those who want super faster hosting for $14.99/month, but don’t feel like paying $80/month for their cloud hosting.

Yes, I Have Used This Plan

You think I would write a review of a hosting plan I haven’t used just so I can make an affiliate commission? Nah, that ain’t me. I only write reviews of things I have actually used. Here’s the email SiteGround sent me after I upgraded from from their GrowBig to GoGeek plan…

Siteground-gogeek-upgrade

SiteGround GoGeek is the same thing as their semi dedicated hosting:

Siteground semi dedicated hosting

Here’s what other people say:

Siteground gogeek review

SiteGround GoGeek Is Good If…

  • You want more server resources (faster website)
  • You want to host multiple websites with priority support
  • You want higher limits on your storage, database, and email
  • You want SiteGround support to restore your site for you if needed
  • You want a pre-installed Git which allows you to create repositories
  • You want to use their PCI compliance to help prevent credit card fraud
  • You want other features that come with SiteGround plans listed below…
  • 30 daily backups, automatic updates, free domain, and hosting migration
  • Actual 99.99% uptimes with quick (priority) support that actually helps you
  • NGINX servers, SSD drives, 4 data centers, Cloudflare and other speed technology
  • Security protection from a team who constantly updates servers during new threats
  • You can pay $14.99/mo for awesome hosting, but don’t want to pay $80/mo for cloud

Semi-Dedicated Hosting = 4x Faster

If you look at SiteGround’s features page under “we allocate the resources you need” you’ll see that as you upgrade plans you also get about 2x the amount of server resources. GoGeek has the highest amount of server resources and is about 4x faster than lower shared hosting plans.

Siteground-gogeek-resources

Here’s how many server resources you get with each plan (also listed on the features page):

Siteground-resources-chart

SiteGround says this about GoGeek’s server resources…

Limited number of GoGeek users are hosted on each server. Thus we are able to provide up to 4x more server resources than on the lower shared hosting plans.

.4s Load Time – my site loads ridiculously fast on GoGeek (view Pingdom report).

2019-pingdom-report

Cloudflare CDN – don’t forget to activate Cloudflare in your cPanel which makes your site even faster. This comes with all SiteGround hosting plans, but definitely make sure you do this.

Siteground cloudflare activation

Turn on aggressive caching, minify code, and Railgun for even faster load times.

Siteground cloudflare settings

If you’re running WordPress and want your site loading as fast as possible, avoid using SiteGround’s caching plugin (SG CachePress) and use W3 Total Cache instead. It has better ratings and should make your WordPress site blazing fast especially if you use my popular W3 Total Cache guide which has over 200 comments. It shows you how to setup the different “performance” tabs on the left of your dashboard once W3TC is installed, plus Cloudflare and MaxCDN. It also has a pre-configured zip file you can upload to W3TC with the same settings I use. This is an AMAZING combination and can easily improve load times by multiple seconds.

Siteground-sg-cachepress

Speed Optimization Tips (Outside Of Hosting)

  • Minimize WordPress plugins, Joomla extensions, etc
  • Configure the W3 Total Cache plugin with Cloudflare/MaxCDN
  • Use a lightweight theme, like a Genesis theme from StudioPress
  • Run your site through GTmetrix to see unoptimized images on the page
  • Resize large images (GTmetrix will tell you the correction dimensions)
  • Specify image dimensions in the HTML or CSS (GTmetrix will also tell you)
  • Use Imagify to losslessly compress all images on your website in bulk
  • Run the P3 Plugin to diagnose large plugins, replace them with lightweight plugins

WP Rocket and WP Fastest cache are also good, and I wrote tutorials for those too.

Let’s Encrypt + Wildcard SSL With PCI Compliance

If you need eCommerce hosting, GoGeek comes with features StartUp and GrowBig don’t have including a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, Wildcard SSL (for use on subdomains), and PCI compliance for safer credit card processing. SiteGround supports most major shopping carts.

Siteground-ecommerce-features

SG-Git For WordPress Repo Creation + Pre-Installed Git – creates a Git repository of your WordPress installation, which you can edit on local branches. Deploy updates and show differences between your local source code and your production or staging site. Pretty geeky.

StartUp vs. GrowBig vs. GoGeek Comparison Chart

A full comparison of SiteGround’s shared hosting plans can be found on the features page:

Siteground-gogeek-plan-features

SiteGround Features:

  • Backups
  • Automatic updates
  • Free domain + email
  • Free Cloudflare CDN
  • Free hosting migration
  • Free Let’s Encrypt SSL
  • Security + spam prevention
  • SSD (solid state drives) for speed
  • Servers on 3 continents for speed
  • NGINX servers, HTTP/2, PHP7, HHVM

GoGeek Features:

Priority Support: Tickets Usually Answered Within 10 Minutes

SiteGround’s GrowBig and GoGeek plan come with priority support where tickets are usually answered within 10 minutes, or I can call SiteGround and speak with them instantly. I’ve only had 1 issue and they resolved it immediately. Their team actually logged into my WordPress site and helped me configure the Wordfence Security Plugin to block spammy bots crawling my site. Their support knows more than just hosting – they’re incredibly knowledgeable with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, themes, plugins, and other components of running a website.

Siteground-support-conversation

Tickets are answered super fast.

Siteground-tickets

GoGeek Reviews From More SiteGround Customers

SiteGround = #1 Host In Multiple Facebook Polls

At $14.99/month GoGeek is cheap compared to their cloud hosting ($80/month) and dedicated servers ($229/month). It’s the perfect balance if you want a super fast website but don’t want to pay an arm and leg for hosting. It should be perfectly capable of running a high traffic website or multiple smaller sites without you having to worry about resources getting consumed and websites getting shut down (a common problem with other cheaper plans).

Fast hosting is the #1 thing WordPress recommends in their optimization guide so while you can setup caching, optimize images, etc. You still have to rely on your hosting to provide enough server resources to make your site load fast. And that’s where GoGeek comes into play. I contribute my .4s load times partially to SiteGround’s GoGeek hosting, but keep in mind there are other ways to make your website load fast. If you’re running WordPress you can find additional tips in my tutorial: Why Is WordPress So Slow And How To Get .4s Load Times.

I hope my SiteGround GoGeek review helped you choose a plan… it’s definitely worth the extra few bucks a month if you want a fast website. And remember, SiteGround will migrate your hosting for free so getting started is as easy as buying a plan and sending your logins.

Omm-on-siteground

2019 hosting poll

View Poll

Switching to siteground

Siteground load time migration

Bluehost to siteground gtmetrix

Hostgator to siteground

Siteground gtmetrix

Siteground google pagespeed insights

100 perfect score on siteground

Siteground genesis

Speed delivered by siteground

Siteground gtmetrix report

Reduced load times with siteground

New siteground response times

Hostgator to siteground migration

Siteground response times on joomla

Switched to siteground hosting

Siteground rocket imagify combo

Joomla gtmetrix on siteground

Siteground pagespeed insights

Siteground on joomla

Siteground reduced load times

Siteground speedy hosting

New pingdom results on siteground

New siteground response time

Siteground response time improvement

View SiteGround GoGeek

 

SiteGround Alternatives

I originally left SiteGround for Cloudways Vultr High Frequency and posted my results in the WordPress Hosting Facebook Group. But that Facebook Group (along with several others) is now run by SiteGround’s affiliates, so join WP Speed Matters if you want less biased feedback.

Avoid siteground

Siteground to cloudways shoutout

Since then, I moved to Rocket.net who is even faster. Unlike SiteGround’s shared plans, Rocket.net and Cloudways Vultr HF are cloud hosting with Cloudflare Enterprise (faster than APO alone), NVMe storage (faster than SATA), Redis (faster than Memcached), and MariaDB (faster than MySQL). And unlike Cloudways, Rocket.net has a lot more resources (32 cores + 128GB RAM) with APO and LiteSpeed’s PHP. In fact, Rocket.net is so fast that they average a <100ms global TTFB which you can test in KeyCDN or SpeedVitals. If yours is slow, you need to rethink your hosting/CDN setup since those are 2 main TTFB factors. Another solid tool to test hosting performance is the WP Hosting Benchmark plugin. TTFB is also 40% of your LCP score.

Keycdn global ttfb
Use KeyCDN to measure TTFB in multiple locations (here’s my GTmetrix report and I pass core vitals)

Maybe you haven’t heard of them because they don’t go aggressive marketing, but here’s an email I got, read this Facebook thread, or see other people who moved from SG to Rocket.net.

Siteground to rocket. Net

Curious to why they’re faster, I made this table.

SiteGround GoGeek NameHero Turbo Cloud FastComet FastCloud Extra Cloudways Vultr HF (2GB) Rocket.net Starter
Type Shared Shared Shared Cloud Private cloud
Websites Multiple Multiple Multiple Multiple 1
Visits/mo (est.) 400,000 (very unlikely) 50,000 400,000 2TB bandwidth 50GB bandwidth
Server Apache + Nginx LiteSpeed LiteSpeed Apache + Nginx Apache + Nginx
Cores/RAM Not listed 3 cores/3GB 6 cores/6GB 1 core/2GB 32 cores/128GB
Storage 40GB / SATA Unlimited NVMe 35GB / SATA 64GB / NVMe 10GB / NVMe
Database MySQL MariaDB MySQL MariaDB MariaDB
Object cache Memcached Redis Memcached Redis Pro Redis
PHP processor FastCGI LiteSpeed LiteSpeed FPM LiteSpeed
PHP workers CPU limits common Efficient with LiteSpeed Efficient with LiteSpeed No limit No limit
DNS Internal (previous issues) Use QUIC Use QUIC DNS Made Easy ($5/mo) Cloudflare
CDN SiteGround CDN QUIC.cloud QUIC.cloud Cloudflare Enterprise ($5/mo) Cloudflare Enterprise
CDN PoPs 176 80 80 285 285
CDN Tbps Not listed Not listed Not listed 192 192
Full page caching x
Smart routing Anycast Geo-routing Geo-routing Argo Argo
Image optimization Very limited via QUIC via QUIC Mirage/Polish Mirage/Polish
Image resizing x x x via Cloudflare via Cloudflare
Cache plugin SG Optimizer LiteSpeed Cache LiteSpeed Cache Breeze x
Email hosting x x
Major incidents TTFB/DNS/CPU issues, but denies them 2011 2-day node outage 2022 DDoS attack on 3 data centers None None
Migrations $30/site 1 free 3 free 1 free + $25/site Unlimited free
TrustPilot rating 4.6/5 4.6/5 4.9/5 4.6/5 4.9/5
CDN price $7.49/mo $.02 – .08/GB $.02 – .08/GB $5/mo Included
Intro price $5.99/mo $9.98/mo $5.49/mo $30/mo $25/mo when paying yearly
Renewal price $39.99/mo $19.95/mo $21.95/mo $30/mo $25/mo

 
If the websites/storage/bandwidth limits are too low, there are still better shared hosts than SiteGround. NameHero’s Turbo Cloud and FastComet’s FastCloud Extra both use LiteSpeed servers which means you’ll use LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud CDN (arguably the fastest setup on a budget). Unlike FastComet, NameHero uses NVMe/Redis, but their data centers are only in US/EU. If your visitors aren’t close to there, use QUIC.cloud CDN’s paid plan which uses 80 PoPs + full page caching, or use the FastCloud Extra plan from FastComet who has more data centers.

These are all faster than SiteGround, but they’ll never admit it.

Rocket. Net trustpilot review

Kinsta to rocket. Net migration

Moved to rocket. Net vs siteground

Rocket. Net positive review

Litespeed cache litespeed server

Siteground vs cloudways vultr

Cloudways to siteground admin

Slow ttfb siteground

Litespeed cache litespeed server

Rocket. Net vs cloudways vultr hf trustpilot review

Rocket. Net facebook review 1

Rocket. Net vs kinsta

Kinsta to rocket. Net ttfb redis

Namehero vs siteground feedback

Wp engine to cloudways switch

Siteground to cloudways dns issue

Siteground to cloudways cpu usage

Namehero vs siteground feedback

Rocket. Net woocommerce elementor

Namehero cloudways rocket. Net
NameHero for shared LiteSpeed, Cloudways Vultr HF for cloud, Rocket.net outperforms both

Yep, these are affiliate links. But it would a lot easier for me to tell you how “great” SiteGround is than to steer you somewhere else. I’m trying to be honest and I’m also open to your feedback/questions if you need help: tom(at)onlinemediamasters.com.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between SiteGround GrowBig and GoGeek?

SiteGround GrowBig comes with less storage, server resources, and it doesn't come with GIT or priority support. GoGeek comes with all those features.

Which SiteGround plan is best?

The best SiteGround plan depends on your budget, but GrowBig is their most popular plan since it's only $2/month more than StartUp and comes with lots of extra features.

What is semi-dedicated hosting?

Semi-dedicated hosting is a balance between shared and dedicated hosting. Since you're sharing servers with less people than you would with shared hosting, more resources will be allocated to your website, making it load faster.

Is GoGeek worth $35/month?

GoGeek is probably not worth $35/month after your promotional price expires. At that price, you can get a faster cloud server from a different provider. SiteGround is more for smaller to medium websites for the 1-year promotional period.

Is priority support worth upgrading to GoGeek?

No. SiteGround's regular support is still extremely fast and helpful. Priority support is even faster, but it doesn't make a big difference unless you are constantly using support.

How many visitors can GoGeek handle?

SiteGround recommends ~ 100,000 monthly visitors for their GoGeek plan, but this is an estimated number. It depends on your plugins, traffic, concurrent visitors, and how much CPU your website is using. If you're running resource-hungry plugins or WooCommerce, you will need a higher plan even without considering monthly visits.

 

Check Out My Other SiteGround Reviews

20 Comments...

  1. Only issue is the massive price hike after year one. Coming into my second year now, the price is over 2x what it was year one.

    Reply
  2. Hi …
    Your review is amazing !
    I am going to upgrade from growbig to gogeek.
    I am getting near 5000 visits per day. Do you recommend me gogeek or should I see other solutions?
    What is your recommendation??

    Reply
    • Read my review about Cloudways before you upgrade! I am in the middle of updating all my tutorials but haven’t gotten to this one. No longer recommend SiteGround. You’re much better off on Cloudways DO.

      Reply
      • Thanks Tom.

        Currently I am on growbig plan of sg.

        My site is creating more db queries as I am using plugin which is helpful me for creating exams.
        Instead of having static content on my site I update my site with quizzes which requires more DB queries

        In this process sitegrounds memecached helpful me lot. As it reduces resources consumption.

        Will I get memecached functionality in ur suggested managed hosting?

        I am not tech guy to manage my own server still am I able to use managed hosting with cloudways. ?

        Reply
        • Hey Sagar,

          Yes, Cloudways has memcached. Once you have an account and set up a server, it’s under Server > Memcached. I believe it’s enabled by default.

          Cloudways is still user-friendly but some people have a little difficulty with a few things. Their support is decent, they also have a Facebook Group (called Cloudways Users). Still, I always like to have a developer on hand. I would at least do a free trial to play around.

          Reply
  3. Thank you again for this invaluable review!!! As I m writing articles on WordPress, I was wondering how you created the first “review” part of this post? (price, percentage, rating, etc.)

    Massive thank you!!!!

    Reply
    • No problem! It’s the WP Rich Snippets plugin. Developer appears to have abandoned it but still works great for me.

      Reply
  4. Hi,

    Thanks for the recommendation, I’m on Growbig with WP Rocket now but thinking about upgrading because i’m getting lot of hits.

    In this article do you say that Siteground´s Cache must be disabled, but in other article I read a comment from you saying that you use SiteGround Cache Wp Rocket.

    What do you recommend using? WP Rocket with or without Siteground’s Cache?

    Thanks! Your blog rocks.

    Reply
    • Hey Alejando,

      I would try WP Rocket, test your scores, install SG Optimizer, and test your scores again. If the two work better together, use those, if not just use WP Rocket. Glad you like the tutorials!

      Reply
  5. I am using siteGround for almost a year and upgrade from StartUp to GroBig.

    Due to exceeding CPU now I am going to Upgrade to GoGeek, so I don’t have to face problem of CPU Exceeding, which I am facing right now almost daily.

    Overall I like SG, their Service, especially Chat and ticket system. And my site Ease Bedding is growing a lot on SG Hosting So I will stay with them!!

    Thanks.

    Reply
    • I’ve had CPU overages too but this happens with all hosts (many of them call it bandwidth limitations when they shut down your site temporarily). If you do an Advanced Twitter Search and go through Bluehost, Godaddy, and HostGator’s Twitter account you will see customers complaining about bandwidth limitations.

      But, I wrote a tutorial for that :)
      https://onlinemediamasters.com/reduce-cpu-usage-wordpress/

      You can fix it by:
      -Checking CPU usage in AWStats (in your cPanel) to learn what’s causing high CPU (crawlers, images, download files, IP addressed, etc)
      -Configuring Wordfence crawl rules to block spammy crawlers and limit search engine crawl rates
      -Uploading this file to your .htaccess to further block spammy crawlers
      -Limit crawl rate in Search Console/Bing Webmaster
      -Enabling heartbeat control
      -Minimizing plugins and disabling unnecessary plugin settings
      -Offloading resources to Cloudflare/MaxCDN
      -Cleaning up your database frequently and optimizing images

      Just wanted to shared in case others had this issue.

      Reply

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